Eager, but frustrated theme designer

[treefingers]

LMMS looks to be a fantastic program, and I hope to make a ton of sublime and/or skull-crunching loops and beats and what-have-you. But I'm also an artist/graphic designer and a big supporter of the FOSS ideals. So, noting the very... "open source" aesthetic of LMMS, I set out first to see if I could give it a bit of a skin job.

I found:
Some bits easily skinnable through PNG swaps
Some bits easily skinnable by altering the existing QT CSS file
Some bits only skinnable by adding code to the QT CSS file
Some bits skinnable with QT CSS, but not entirely
Some bits not skinnable at all (very nay!)

So I gave up.

I'm relatively good (for an artist) at poking around in these sorts of things. But I'm not able to poke around in the source to change the hard-coded stuff. I'm very not able to turn non-skinnable stuff into easily skinnable stuff. And I have zero desire to try. (I can code a little, but we're talking simple JS or Python scripts for programs with very well-developed APIs.)

As I said, I'd love to give LMMS a facelift, but it simply can't be done to a level that would justify my time and effort. It's a problem I see all the time in open source projects. But compare skinnable programs and you'll find that the easiest to skin also have--by far*--the best custom themes available. Throw the crayon monkeys a bone, and we'll repay you with skins that make LMMS as beautiful as it is powerful.

*citations available on request

[shashikantb]

Hello treefingers,

I agree with you. I'm a programmer but I like designing.
I made some themes, you can find them here. I'll post the screenshots as soon as I get some time at your thread meant for skins.

I also got annoyed sometimes due to these limitations. But this is when our minds tend to move towards creativity.

Anyways, I welcome you here and wish you best of luck for your music and designing work.

[treefingers]

But there are also limitations that simply make even a modest goal impossible. We don't get to see these efforts because even a creatively adapted variation simply couldn't be done.

Try getting the internal window titlebars to match the window borders (for example). Not gonna happen. Can't even change the background color of most things. So even if all I wanted to do was make the current appearance consistent with itself on its own terms, I'd be stumped.

My biggest hopes were to modernize the Win95-era bevels all over (e.g.) the FX-Mixer, and replace the custom 5px-ish gradients on the frames/tabs in (e.g.) the Default Preset settings window.

I still might throw together a skin just to help illustrate my issues here. I think I can change about 50-60% of the pixels on a default LMMS screen. And I think I can change more than anyone has so far on LMMS Sharing.

[shashikantb]

Yes treefingers, this is exactly what's required. I'll wait for your theme.

[Sti-Jay]

If you know a little bit of HTML and Qt4 you can go ahead make a theme and maybe it will become the next default one

[shashikantb]

If you know a little bit of HTML and Qt4 you can go ahead make a theme and maybe it will become the next default one

Yes sti2nd, we do know html and styling. But the actual issue is that the codes for all the parts have not been shared. So there are many parts, which we wish to modify but can't. We are limited to only those parts, for which we can find the codes in default stylesheet OR those parts which are displayed using png images.

[treefingers]

If you know a little bit of HTML and Qt4 you can go ahead make a theme and maybe it will become the next default one

Well, I'd be pretty damn flattered if someone made my work a default setting. But I'm mostly after making a nice one for my own use, while putting it out there for others. Probably what you and shashikantb are in it for.

Qt4 I don't know at all (most of Linuxing has been GTK-centred), but apparently LMMS at least makes use of something resembling CSS which is something I have done a fair bit with. What I can't find, however, is anything definitive about how to address the various custom widgets (beyond those pointed to in the default stylesheet) and what controls use which standard widgets. Maybe I'll go all systematic and sciency on this and post my findings.

What the hell. I'm bored this week. I'll see what I can change, post the results, and maybe in the process I can give the devs some clues about which widgets need the most immediate help.